Wow, the sun is out, the sky is blue. Haven’t seen than in a while. Still no heat, but it’s not that cold outside. Washed my hair in cold water and am now awake.
Anyhoo — more details are coming out about Mitt’s “relief” party.
The plan was for supporters to bring hurricane relief supplies to the event, and then deliver the bags of canned goods, packages of diapers, and cases of water bottles to the candidate, who would be perched behind a table along with a slew of volunteers and his Ohio right-hand man, Senator Rob Portman. To complete the project and photo-op, Romney would lead his crew in carrying the goods out of the gymnasium and into the Penske rental truck parked outside.
But the last-minute nature of the call for donations left some in the campaign concerned that they would end up with an empty truck. So the night before the event, campaign aides went to a local Wal Mart and spent $5,000 on granola bars, canned food, and diapers to put on display while they waited for donations to come in, according to one staffer. (The campaign confirmed that it “did donate supplies to the relief effort,” but would not specify how much it spent.)
Zombie Eyes had his own “relief” events in Wisconsin, where people had to hold up work so there’d be something left for the candidate to do when he showed up. No more washing clean pots!
This is so stupid. It may cost more to truck the stuff from Wisconsin than the stuff is worth. And I bet most of these donations are just going to sit on a loading dock for weeks until someone gets around to dealing with them. Eventually they’ll probably end up in a “free food” pantry for the poor after things are more back to normal.
And they really do have lots of grocery stores in New Jersey. Many are closed, but you can check the Twitter feed #njopen to find out where to get stuff. People without power or Internet need generators more than they need cans of corn.
It’s impossible not to see that this storm has devastated Mitt Romney’s presidential candidacy. The response to the hurricane has seemed like one long dramatic Obama campaign commercial, a lesson in “We’re all in this together,†while Romney, the man who said he’d dismantle FEMA, flails on the sidelines….
…I can’t be sure whether or how much disaster relief will matter to swing state voters outside of the hurricane zone, but I am stranded (on a blue island) in the swing state of Wisconsin, where people are tuned in to the storm and the government response. No one can be reassured by Romney’s empty posturing. Unless there is some government-abetted or neglected further disaster, I think Obama will be reelected next Tuesday. Hurricane Sandy has reminded us what’s at stake.
… to the extent that the race was still an open question, with some voters still making up their minds or willing to change them at the last instant, it is hard not to believe that the storm has helped the president. Put simply, it has brought the race back closer to first principles. For most of the year, Obama had successfully framed the election as a choice between two approaches, one favoring the Bain Capital upper crust, the other geared toward the broad middle—the 99 percent and, yes, the 47 percent.
We’ve still got SIX DAYS to go. By this weekend, people still without power (or hot water!) will be very cranky, and Fox News will be talking about “Obama’s Katrina.” So the President has to stay on his toes. But right now, from here, Sandy looks like “Mitt’s Waterloo.”
Mittens is making TWO more stops in Florida. Think he’ll suddenly become a huge FEMA booster?
My 80 year-old Obama-lovin’ Mama, a citizen for 12 years, after watching the news last night, and seeing the fake relief effort by Mitt, and Trump’s extension of his $5 million offer to President Obama, said to me in Russian, “Why don’t Romney and Trump each give $5 million to the Red Cross. They can afford it.”
Romney and Ryan are complete sham’s as human beings. Faking empathy they can’t summon if their very lives depended on it.
I am disgusted with this election.
You have a good, smart, and decent black, family man, who may lose the election to a couple of sociopaths, who, when asked to sing a song about their lives and thoughts and experieces and plans, can only sing one note on the musical scale – “Me. Me. Me. Me. ME! ME!! ME!!! ME!!!!”
If Obama was white, this race wouldn’t be about race, and he’d be winning in a landslide.
But, we haven’t yet grown up as a people – wedge politics still works.
Obama has already shown he can work with Chris Christie, which is quite a challenge considering what a lard-head (and other parts) CC is. I remember the frat-hazing of Kathleen Blanco, Dem governor of Louisiana at the time of Katrina, while Haley Barbour of Mississippi got anything he asked for. As usual, the Republicans-in-Charge showed how not to handle a crisis with that mess.
If the feds now can work amicably with Christie, Bloomberg, and everyone else on the state and municipal level (while ignoring d-bags like Rep. Steve King; he’s from Iowa anyway and can kindly drop dead), Obama will have proved that this election really is A Choice, and voting for Obama’s re-election is the right answer.
Oooh, meanwhile, Tweety is furious!
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/31/chris-matthews-climate-change-challengers-pigs_n_2048861.html
Our U.S. Senate candidate Deb Fischer (R-Mars) is a climate change denier. And she will win. Gah!
See? God really is a Democrat, or at least S/He’s so revolted by those two frauds, that S/He’s giving this beleaguered country one more break to get it right. From the way Chief’s yard signs were left intact, while the neighbor’s Romney signs were blown down, to the way power was maintained to your particular unit alone, to keep the blog-fires burning, there’s evidently still enough good karma left in this country to get some help from the higher realms.
Nothing like a major disaster/test to reveal who is made of Presidential material, and who is just pretending.
Don’t you think the timing of the hurricane is a little suspicious? Obama’s own “October surprise” maybe? I think Darrell Issa needs to start investigating the National Weather Service.
I’ll be surprised if he doesn’t. Looks like he’ll probably be re-elected too, drat.
“Don’t you think the timing of the hurricane is a little suspicious? Obama’s own “October surprise—
When Obama was beating Trump at soccer as a boy in Kenya, it was because of Dark Voodoo.
Actually, speaking of disasters, one thing that has surprised me is that there’s been so little discussion of the Deep Water Horizon in this campaign. Not that I’ve heard, anyway. I would have thought the Republicans would have tried to paint it as a spectacular failure for Obama, but I guess it’s something that no one wants to talk about.
cund – thought you’d appreciate this quote from the latest ‘Rolling Stone’ issue – “America is becoming like an untreatable paranoic narcissist – you can’t tell us anything, because we hear only the parts we like.” Really ‘explains’ why so many of us on this site are so flummoxed by the American people who continue to believe that the guy should be president – they literally don’t hear the lies, distortions, false facts, continual and constant self-contradictions coming out of his mouth.
(By the way, someone needs to tell the “untreatables” that the ‘government’ is, finally and merely, the collective word for the people.)
“so little discussion of the Deep Water Horizon in this campaign.” In one of the debates, Romney accused Obama of cutting domestic oil production, which he did, temporarily, so they could review the deep water drilling rules.
You ain’t just whistling Dixie, ‘Gulag. Remember the statements made at the end of the third debate?
Romney:
I’d like to be that leader, with your support. I’ll work with you. I’ll lead you in an open and honest way. And I ask for your vote. I’d like to be the next president of the United States to support and help this great nation, and to make sure that we all together maintain America as the hope of the earth.
Obama:
And if I have the privilege of being your president for another four years, I promise you I will always listen to your voices, I will fight for your families and I will work every single day to make sure that America continues to be the greatest nation on earth.
One views the Presidency as a prize; the other as an opportunity for service.
You can read too much into this, but I think it’s reflecting the different attitude each person takes.
Maha, I’m THRILLED to hear you’re fine and have power, you may make a convert of me yet ( I already lean in that direction). So glad to hear my friend ‘Gulag dodged the bullet too!
On the way home from Miami today, I lost most of the radio stations in Indian River county (near Vero Beach), but I managed to get Rush Limbaugh. He is the Goddamned living embodyment of Eric Cartman if ther ever could be one. He was hammering away on Obama on everything from the economy, unemployment, the Deepwater Horizon disaster, and the fires in Texas. You’d have to be a thoroughly brainwashed ditto-head dipshit to swallow Rush’s load o’ crap. He was particularly pissed at Chris Christy for having the unmitigated gall to even TALK to Obama.I’m hoping Rusho blew his foot off with his pathetic comments and whining; we’ll soon see.
http://smirkingchimp.com/thread/richard-eskow/46305/gods-stimulus-itll-take-more-than-just-money-to-recover-from-sandy
I have no insight into whatever process those few remaining ‘undecided’ voters use to pick someone to vote for, in fact it baffles me that anyone can not have decided by now. So I dearly hope the sight of Obama being ‘in charge’ and ‘working across the aisle’ with Christie and whatever else swings them to the correct side. Still I have to think that if the sight of Mitt being a douchebag was enough, wouldn’t it have swung those votes already?
I still think it’ll be a close thing, because my right-wing college friend is still posting nonsense to Facebook about how Obama cut the FEMA budget too! and is still ranting incoherently about how Benghazi is worse than Watergate and other things that are impervious to reason and/or evidence.
In a sane world, this would be unthinkable, but I would be willing to bet $5, which is a lot for a cheapskate like me, on the following:
If Obama wins there will be a cry from the right that Sandy influenced the voting or the volume of voters. Pat Robertson will ruminate on the timing of the storm, Halloween and the end result, an Obama victory, and he will conjecture that …
I guess it’s pretty obvious where this is going. isn’t?
Goatherd;
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=62Qfbrc1jdo